“When asked about his past, ARATH smiles and artfully avoids the question. From what you can gather, he was born in Athkatla, the son of a wealthy nobleman, and grew up in relative peace until he discovered his father’s ties to the slave trade. Furious at his father’s involvement in people-trafficking, he ran away, eventually joining the local Druid Grove and studying to become a druid himself. Arath is quick both on his feet and in his speech, words tumbling out often before he can finish the last, and has a marked appreciation for the beauty of nature. Though he is in his mid-twenties, he exudes a confidence and charisma of one far older than his years would suggest. His eyes sparkle as you probe him with questions, but he does not answer them, saying only that he feels no need to recount the past when the present is so much more interesting.”

Arath is a complex, self-assured, humorous and somewhat hedonistic druid who, on the surface, cares for little else beyond himself and his love for nature. He loves the human form, both male and female, and isn’t afraid to be direct about what he wants—though he’s not always successful in getting it, much to his chagrin. He has a passionate hate for aberrations, the undead and anything else that falls beyond the natural scheme of things, and he has some rather complex and occasionally contradictory beliefs.

This major release overhauls the installation process to minimise dependence on fallible shell scripts and enables installation on Linux systems out of the box. Updates have been made to multiple translations, and the Czech translation has been added. A few new features have been added, including default Baldur’s Gate soundsets, the end of Tales of the Sword Coast screen, and subtitles for the Baldur’s Gate introduction movie. Quite a number of bugs have been fixed.

Important for mega-mod installers: the installation has an extra prompts whether to biff all files or just some. The recommended command line command for auto-installation is now

And to round off our releases this 12 Days, we have a new mod from Enkida!

This will upgrade various BioWare and player-made NPCs so they have a somewhat “standardized” look - similar head sizes, color range, and an attempt to be semi-faithful to the original BioWare artwork “look.” You can see all included portrait upgrades in this thread!

A new NPC by Pixel Kaiser (also known as Tameon the Dragoon) has been released for BGII: SoA!

This mod brings Yeslick from Baldur’s Gate to BGII: SoA, with an extensive variety of banters and interjections, a new kit (Alaghor of Clangeddin) as well as a number of PC dialogues throughout the game. Yeslick is an older dwarf, a devotee of Vergadain, dwarven god of wealth and luck and Clangeddin, dwarven god of war and battle.

He tends to model himself as the father-figure of the group, and can often be found trying to help the party to reach their potential… to mixed results. He has a kind heart and a steady hand, and is loyal to the PC to the end.

When asked about his past, Yeslick chuckles grimly. “There ain’t nothin’ there ye be wantin’ to know, young ‘un. Trust me.” From what you have gleaned, Yeslick is peculiar for a dwarf; a follower of Vergadain, the Dwarven god of wealth and luck and Clangeddin, Dwarven god of war, he is an unassuming companion with an aversion to alcohol and the undead. You know little about his history beyond that he grew up in the Dales to the north and that heat makes him extremely irritable.

The bigg Tweaks
This mod is a collection of different modifications to the game, ranging from most necessary fixes to blatant cheese; most of these are specifically intended to make the game less frustrating. All components are optional; the installer is WeiDU and uses the most recent coding commands and conventions, allowing it to be compatible with virtually all possible mod combinations.

Refinements
The Refinements Mod is somewhat of an arrogant project. We feel that many things in the game are somehow misplaced, not detailed enough, not balanced enough, not cool enough, or… you get the picture. So we’ve tried to fix them, with the aim to provide a fitting new standard form for the game. It’s still an evolving work; you never know how many things you may want to refine, given time. It includes: New HLAs Tables for all classes, SwashImoen (turning Imoen into a Swashbuckler/Mage), Shapeshifting fixes, Universal Lesser Mage robes and the Sword Angel kit.